Regulatory capture is a issue of more overall import is greater to those that marriage equality (like inheritance, job benefits, kids, etc -- the real - for a non-traditional marriage based on love or convenience) as the impact is huge and across most people and less mitigated case by case as marriage inequality. Regulatory capture is heavy duty and realistic poop. The "experts" usually are selected ideologues rather than the mathematically and empathetic intuitive with like experience and education.

We need to clean up the Democratic Party. The GOP is a nightmare on its own trajectory.

A major blind spot at DU is that "we", the Democratic Party, have the most control over our own Party.

Because of this constructive and accurrately descriptive of the current actions, ommissions, and stances of our political tribe is the individual' most effective and natural role once joining a Party is not popular; specifically, to criticize the policies, appointments, and acclaimed political "wins" under a Democratic Party administration makes one a minority, sometimes mocked, at DU. Democratic Party malacontents are the canaries in Party politics and, if one looks at DU, often tend to those with some age, experience, and less vested interest.

Your contribution to DU is smart, clever, and heroic in my perception.

Montsanto example:

Michael R. Taylor

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Michael R. Taylor is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

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He received a B.A. degree in political science from Davidson College and a law degree from the University of Virginia. In 1976, after passing the bar examination, Taylor became a staff attorney for the FDA, where he was executive assistant to the Commissioner.

In 1981 he went into private practice at King & Spalding, a law firm, one client of which was the biotechnology company Monsanto, where he established and led the firm's food and drug law practice.

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On July 17, 1991, Michael Taylor left King & Spalding, returning to the FDA to fill the newly created post of Deputy Commissioner for Policy. During that time, he signed the Federal Register notice stating that milk from cows treated with BGH did not have to be labeled as such. His name is not on the FDA’s 1992 policy statement on genetically engineered plant foods, but he is said to have been a co-author. Both of these documents grew out of, and fall within, the regulatory policy framework that was developed starting in the mid 1980s under the Reagan and Bush Administrations to ensure safety of the public and to ensure the continuing development of the fledgling biotechnology industry without overly burdensome regulation. The policy had three tenets: "(1) U.S. policy would focus on the product of GM techniques, not the process itself, (2) only regulation grounded in verifiable scientific risks would be tolerated, and (3) GM products are on a continuum with existing products and, therefore, existing statutes are sufficient to review the products."

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Between 1994 and 1996 he moved to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where he was Administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection Service. During that term he implemented a science-based approach ( called Hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP)) to raising safety standards for meat and poultry production over the protests from industry, which has been called by food safety advocates "a truly heroic accomplishment".
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Between 1996 and 2000, after briefly returning to King & Spalding, he then returned to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy.

In 1999, a lawsuit (Alliance For Bio-Integrity v. Shalala) and GAO report revealed considerable disagreement within the FDA concerning decisions about biotechnology products made during Taylor's tenure there. The lawsuit and report also revealed that Mr. Taylor had recused himself from matters related to Monsanto’s BGH and had “never sought to influence the thrust or content” of the agency’s policies on Monsanto’s products.

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On July 7, 2009, Taylor once again returned to government as Senior Advisor to the FDA Commissioner. And on January 13, 2010, he was appointed to another newly created post at the FDA, this time as Deputy Commissioner for Foods.

Taylor is featured in the documentaries The Future of Food and The World According to Monsanto as a pertinent example of revolving door since he is a lawyer who has spent the last few decades moving between Monsanto and the FDA and USDA.

The inside story of how the government let one company squash biotech innovation, and dominate an entire industry

By Lina Khan

Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly closed a three-year antitrust investigation into Monsanto, the biotech giant whose genetic traits are embedded in over 90 percent of America’s soybean crop and more than 80 percent of corn. Despite a splash of press coverage when the investigation was initially announced, its termination went mostly unreported. The DOJ released no written public statement. Only a brief press release from Monsanto conveyed the news.

The lack of attention belies the significance of the decision, both for food consumers around the world and for U.S. businesses. Experts who have examined Monsanto’s conduct say the Justice Department’s decision not to act all but officially establishes the firm’s sovereignty over the U.S. seed industry. Many of them also say the decision ratifies aggressive practices Monsanto used to entrench its dominance and deter competition. This includes highly restrictive contractual agreements that excluded rivals, alongside a multibillion-dollar spree to buy up seed companies.

When the administration first launched its investigation, many antitrust and agriculture experts believed it was still possible to imagine an industry characterized by greater competition in the marketplace and greater diversity in seeds. That future may now be foreclosed.

DUBAI — Iran's most powerful authority said the Islamic Republic would destroy the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if Israel launched a military attack against it.

"At times the officials of the Zionist regime (Israel) threaten to launch a military invasion, but they themselves know that if they make the slightest mistake the Islamic Republic will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during an address, broadcast live on state television.

Israel has threatened military action against Iran unless it abandons nuclear activities which the West suspects are intended to develop nuclear weapons, allegations Tehran denies.

Khamenei said he was not optimistic about proposals for direct talks with the United States about the nuclear program, saying Washington did not want the issues resolved.

In 1974, when Brig. Gen. Efrain Rios Montt was robbed of his rightful election victory by former President Carlos Arana Osorio, he fled to California and joined forces with evangelical crusader and recovering alcoholic Jim Durkin, who headed the Eureka-based Gospel Outreach fundamentalist movement. To Durkin and his followers today, the ascendancy of Rios Montt provides a golden opportunity to propagate their teachings and convert Guatemala into the first Latin American country with a Protestant majority by the end of the '90s.

Rios Montt was reborn from the ashes of defeat and exile, and returned to seize power in the '82 palace coup orchestrated by junior military officers and his "gringo" evangelical cronies, co-founders of the Church of the Word (\o7 el Verbo\f7 ), a Guatemala-based offshoot of Gospel Outreach.

During his abbreviated tenure, Rios Montt preached the word of God on television while publicly executing accused communists and common criminals; in the Highlands, his army mounted a bloody counterinsurgency, named "Bullets and Beans," against insurgents of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union, who had recruited thousands of impoverished Mayan Indians.

By the time Rios Montt was overthrown by Gen. Humberto Mejia Victores in August, 1983, he had left an indelible mark on his countrymen: His scorched-earth policy had wiped out hundreds of Mayan villages, creating a million refugees and leaving 15,000 Guatemalans dead or disappeared.

Former Humboldt County Resident Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemalan Military Dictator, to Answer to Genocide Charges Tomorrow

Almost thirty years after the end of his brutal military reign, 85-year-old Efraín Ríos Montt will appear in a Guatemala City court tomorrow to answer charges that he ordered the genocide of tens of thousands of his countrymen of Mayan descent during his year-and-a-half long tenure as dictator of that country. (Coverage: Los Angeles Times, New York Times, The Guardian.)

The court case begins less than a week after Ríos Montt lost the immunity from prosecution that he enjoyed as a state official. After being deposed in a coup in 1983, Ríos Montt embarked on a semi-legitimate political career that culminated in a failed presidential bid in 2003 and eventual election to the legislature in 2007.

Sometimes noted in the current round of coverage is the fact that Ríos Montt is an ordained minister with the Iglesia del Verbo (Church of the Word). This is a Latin American offshoot of the Eureka-based Gospel Outreach, a Christian denomination that has its roots in the old Lighthouse Ranch Jesus commune on Table Bluff.

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When he returned to Guatemala, Gospel Outreach went with him. Durkin remained his spiritual advisor before, during and after the 1982 coup in which he gained power. As recounted in this Peter Schrag column from 1983 — well after Montt had ramped up the murder of indigenous citizens — researchers from The Nation magazine showed that Gospel Outreach promoted Montt’s cause, raising money among its growing organization to promote their church member as a bastion against the spread of Communism in Latin America. Church leaders were promoted to high governmental positions.

A few years after Montt was thrown out for the first time, a documentary by Bay Area filmmakers Steve Talbot and Elizabeth Farnsworth, showed that the church acted as the good cop to Montt’s bad in the infamous “Beans and Bullets” program, in which hundreds of indigenous villages were razed. These days, Gospel Outreach has an open compound — a large church, plus several homes — just of Harris Avenue, about halfway between Safeway and Redwood Acres.

The church is Gospel Outreach, founded at an abandoned Coast Guard station in northern California in the early 1970's. Members had long hair, played guitars and conducted baptisms in the Pacific. Mild prosperity, haircuts and other trappings of respectability overtook them. The church now has a congregation of 500 in Eureka, Calif.

In 1976, a church member eager to proselytize went to Guatemala. Protestant success there in recent years, the documentary says, is a subject of ''intense speculation.'' Why has it been a success? The documentary offers two reasons: Protestant fundamentalism encourages an ''apocalyptic'' view commensurate with Guatemalan history; military regimes oppose liberal Catholics. Possibly, there is a third reason: The missionaries are awfully good at what they do.

The original church member was followed by others. An outpost of Gospel Outreach was established in Guatemala City, where it attracted upper-middle class converts, among them Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. After a military coup in March 1982, the Army called him out of retirement to head the new Government.

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Thus a rural pacification program - called ''Beans and Bullets'' - was an excuse to raze villages and then make the villagers wards of the Government. Gospel Outreach, with the Army's blessing, supplied food, medicine and clothing. An old film clip from the Christian Broadcasting Network shows that even three dentists were flown in.

At the same time, Gospel Outreach spoke to conservative Christians in the United States. In an appeal for funds, Gospel Outreach said that Nicaragua was ''a model for Marxist oppression,'' while El Salvador was the scene of a ''brutal war.'' Guatemala, however, represented ''an opportunity.'' The White House, apparently impressed, allowed Edwin Meese to meet with church leaders.

Gospel Outreach is an evangelical Pentecostal church with headquarters in Eureka, California and Guatemala. It grew out of the "Jesus People" movement of the 1960s in the United States. Jim Durkin and Joseph Anfuso are among its founders. (1) According to Sara Diamond, a researcher on the Religious Right, Gospel Outreach practices a moderate form of shepherding because its literature emphasizes "commitment," "covenant relationship," and "spiritual authority. "(2) It is an evangelical organization that believes the Bible is the Word of God and that the authority of government is ordained by God. (3)

Under Mr. Durkin's direction the basic precepts of GospelOutreach evolved: "unquestioned acceptance of the Bible as the literal word of God; a missionary responsibility to reach out and carry the word to others; a decentralized structure with autonomous congregations and little distinction between clergy and laity; strong emphasis on family ties, and a pentecostal liturgy which includes the practice of speaking in tongues. "(3)

For dowsing Dad always used willow sticks, willow being an indicator species of high ground water and thus having an affinity for such conditions in dowser's theory.

I have an undergrad degree in forest science and could have filed for soil science degree if had gone on 6 weeks soil summer field course rather than 10 week forestry field course.

Often argued with my Dad that his water "dowsing" was just from the self-evident knowledge in his life experience as I could do the exact same thing by looking at subtle changes in vegetation, soil, and landscape morphology and didn't need sticks but a shovel was helpful One might have a field in rolling hill suitable for farming, home, or other development requiring a well. The obvious, if present, best place to put a well is going to be in an area with the mottled look of the soil B horizon that results from anerobic soil micro-organisms and evidence of a high water table.

Had a huge head start over other students at undergrad university (UC Berkeley 70s) because had grown up mining, farming, roadbuilding, logging, mineral prospecting, and fly fishing (quit hunting age 17 during Vietnam) with my 8th grade educated Dad. Reading wildland was like breathing from my youth experience with Dad but learned how to talk to other scientists, greatly broadened vision, etc. in university.

used to find/map heavy metal (gold, silver, nickel, chrome, copper, etc) strikes along geologic contacts or boundaries or ore masses. This can be an initial step in mineral prospecting before drilling cores to further establish feasibility of mining.

They are like the metal detectors used by hobbyists in finding old coins or gold nuggets or whatever.

One can use them to map heavy mineralization.

For example, geological contacts may form along the edges of fault lines marked by serpentine strikes. The contacts across the landscape may not be apparent at the surface but there may be native copper, nickle, etc. where the serpentine on fault lines meets the meta-sedimentary rock. One can map the heavy mineralized areas with these tools.

I would imagine this is similar to what another poster mentioned about utility people apparently dowsing to find metal pipes before digging.

I do not know enough about this particular as to make a conclusion as to whether a fraud.